


Session 4.1 - Bathing and stories

by Munnin



Series: The Darthen Empire Campaign [5]
Category: Pathfinder (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Bluebooking, Gen, No context outside the campaign, RPG notes, campaign diary, please ignore unless you're playing this game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 10:24:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18313652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Munnin/pseuds/Munnin
Summary: The Company recover from the Battle of the Broken Swing, bath in the river, find their name, and get to know each other better.





	Session 4.1 - Bathing and stories

**Author's Note:**

> Don’t bother reading this unless you're playing Pathfinder with me. It really won’t make sense. This is just a spot for me to host some bluebooking / out of session prose. It's not meant for anyone not playing and isn't written to make a lick of sense. I’m just feeding the muses so they let me sleep. 
> 
> Please excuse the mangled google translate Japanese. 
> 
> Co-written with other members of the group with great appreciation.

Cass came down to the river’s edge, finding a stone above the waterline to strip off. Her armour was slashed across the chest, matching the memory of searing pain that lingered well after the potion had healed the wound. 

Her shirt was likewise ruined, blood making the edges of the black cloth stiff as it dried. 

She set the armour aside, unwinding her obi and carefully setting her weapons on top should they be needed. Shirt and pants followed, her breast bindings falling in tatters where the strike had laid them to ribbons. 

She steps into the river with a sigh, letting the cool water wash away the scent of blood and sweat and fear and death. 

Only then did she notice the expressions of her companions. Everett’s eyebrow raised, and Jeff’s lip curled in something of a grin. Even Shinokishi’s cheeks reddening ever so slightly, conspicuous against his unusually pale completion. At least he was accustomed to bathing in mixed company, a practice common in the homeland they shared. Piotr’s absence conspicuous in the lack of joking comment.

She shook her head, bemused by their reaction. They were all of them dirty, all of them bloodstained and sore. How was her skin any different to theirs in needing to be cleansed? 

She washed with the efficiency of practice and stepped back onto the shore, using the distraction of Piotr’s return to rinse the blood from her shirt and pants. To spare their blushes she wrapped the length of her sash around her chest and retied her fundoshi. 

Hanging her clothes from a tree branch to dry, she made her way over to where Jeff had his hands in the water, his face a portrait of concentration and asked if he might teach her to fish as he did.

She found herself more comfortable than she expected to in the massive fighter’s presence. His fierceness of the field of battle was a sight to behold but the residual rage that drove him to desecrate the bodies in the aftermath spoke of a pain more deeply held. A pain the tapestry of scars that covered his back gave greater clue to. 

And yet here by the river, crouched at his side to watch the almost playful tickling of his fingers, she saw a different person. A gentle soul with a patience nature. Someone willing to teach and easy to learn from. 

The art of finger-fishing fascinated her and her success, however humble compared to his, was a joyful moment in a day of terror and tribulation. Her open smile as she hauled her catch out of the water was perhaps the first honest smile most of them had ever seen from her. 

Donning her clothes once more, she set about repairing her armour. Setting a small pot of pitch on pile of coals removed from the fire (and safely out of the way of Jeff’s wonderful cooking), she patched the rents in her armour with strips of canvas.

She listened intently to Everett’s tale, studying the lines of his face. He might be older that most in the group but he seemed no less adrift or bereft. But unlike her, it was within his power to take back that which was lost to him and his. 

When Everett mentioned not trusting Rastus, Cass caught his eye, raising an eyebrow and nodding minutely in agreement. There was something in the rebel agent that she too distrusted, thought she could not name exactly what it was. 

At his request that they might know themselves by his family’s name, she looked about, studying the party’s reaction. It was Shinokishi’s gaze she caught, a look of questioning there, of… resentment perhaps. For a man of her own land, she sometimes found his mixed blood face harder to read for it. 

With the back end of the stick she was using in the pitch, she scribed a character in the dirt by her knee, within Shinokishi’s line of sight. First ブラック- Black as it might be written as a proper noun, a title. Then scoring a line through it, she scribes it as 黒, the black of night, of shadows. The colour not the name. 

She glanced up at him, looking for understanding in his face. Common was such a jumbled language, at once too complicated and too simple. It lacked the nuance of Tein, the layers of meaning. Nuances it was a strange comfort to share with another once more. 

When Everett finished his tale, Cass looked across to find Piotr sitting with his blanket over his lap, his trousers out as he carefully sewed material on them with a look of intense concentration on his face. “Seeing as we are now _The Black Company_ , I figured I had best get into the theme of it."

And odd statement, given the strip of cloth he sewed was bright blue, the strip beside it a striking red. She tilted her head towards him, eyeing the colourful cloth. “Interesting choice.”

He grinned, nodding toward the treasured child's drawing carefully placed nearby. "Old trick we used to do when we doubled as stage-hands. One-side is for performances." He held up the colourful material, then swiftly pulled the other trouser-leg inside out; it had already been stained and daubed black. "The other for stage-work. Used a mix of tree-sap, water and ground charcoal for the dye."

Cass nodded. “A disguise. Clever.” She lined up the last tear and daubed the back of the armour with the sticky mess, sealing the canvas in place. “The Blacksmith asked my title. I told him _Kagemei_.”

He cocked his head. "And that means...?"

She picked up a stick and drew a complex character in the dirt with the back end of her stick, to the side of the one she had drawn earlier. "This - Shadow of Darkness." She changed one of the characters very slightly. "This - Black Moth."

He smiled but she saw a slight trace of uncertainty in it. "Very evocative - um, poetic even?"

She cocked her head in return. “You disapprove?”

He shook his head quickly. "No, I mean yes, uh.. I mean... It's really cool. Just-" He shrugged "I just hope that you all aren't expecting me to come up with a cool name like that." A worried glance toward the picture, before he took it and carefully folded it; placing it in his pack

She watched him, setting her armour down. “Wait.”

She reached into her bag, pulling out a sheet of parchment and a scrap of oiled canvas. She held a hand out to him, to the treasured drawing. “Please?”

He hesitated briefly before handing the picture over - a slight tremble in his hand

She bowed, acknowledging the trust he was placing in her. Sitting cross-legged, she deftly flattened the drawing, folding the parchment over the sheet. She laid the canvas behind them, rolling the layers together carefully then bound them closed with a scrap of lacing. A handsome and serviceable scroll that would protect the drawing for carrying.

He grinned widely, his eyes shining in appreciation. "Thank you very much..."

She bowed, returning to check her drying armour repairs. “What is it you wish to be known for?”

"For us in the circus, 'specially the clowns - they are known by the face paint, the costume. There are some that have run for generations - but nobody knows; or is allowed to know who is the person under it." He shook his head sadly, "Boffo was like that, he was an old-school clown - a master in the ring, but a nobody outside it."

He pointed to the picture "That is ME, those kids; they made that for me - not some silly face paint, not someone carrying his father's legacy of pratfalls. Just me." Another shrug, "I guess that's what I want to be known for - just being me!"

She studied him, expression unreadably still. When he finished speaking, she looked away, down at the pattern of her armour. “Yours in the path of _Seii_.” She tilted her head, trying to remember the word for it in Common, “Sincerity.” 

He nodded and chuckled. "People don't expect it - everyone puts on a face to the world; several depending on who they are around..." with that he gave her a knowing wink and nodded toward Shinokishi, now preparing tea. 

She scowled at that, her cheeks darkening as she turned her focus on her armour, trimming a repair.

He chuckled again - genuine mirth, not a hint of nastiness. "It's all good, consider it dropped. Sure, I can throw in a disguise now and then - but I worry that if I do that too much; I will turn into old Boffo... And become the character" After a moment’s thought he added, “You know I did just think of a fancy code-name if the others insist on it though..." He thrusted his hands out wide and grinned with his typical goofy expression. "Black COMEDY...!!!"

His outburst draws out another lightning fast little smile. She shook her head, returning to her work. “Own you name. It is who you are. You need no mask. That is a thing to be proud of.”

He smiled in pleasure. "Thank you, it's all I really have left"

"It is no small thing." She nodded, a touch of sadness in her down-turned eyes. She checked the last patch and stood, refitting the armour to check how the repairs look. From the outside, most of them line up well, looking like nothing more than a crease to the leather. The one across her chest, the blow that felled her, showed as a line of black, disrupting the fine patterning of decoration. She looked down, frowning critically.

His voice softened "I guess we are all in that position in our own ways. I am sorry if I caused you pain."

She looked up, her expression quizzical and confused. “You have caused me no pain.” She touched the repair. “I chose to ride in to join you in the fray.”

His voice even and measured. "I was referring to what we have left. 

She gives only the smallest possible shrug, eyes briefly turned east.

But as to that..." He nodded to the repair "How about in future, you let me distract them so they don't damage your armour anymore" He gave a playful wink.

“You were busy. It was my time to be the distraction.”

“True, but it gives me the chance to do THIS!" He laughed aloud and with a flick of his wrists; his trousers were inside out - presenting a lurid colour, before slipping them on his head

She covered her mouth but the shake in her shoulders belied the giggle she managed to suppress.

But all mirth fled from her as Shinokishi came over to them, a mug of tea in hand. 

She felt her breath catch as he offered it to her, one hand beneath, the other holding the cup in presentation. 

It was too out of place - the practice of _chanoyu_. Too much the action of a ritual hospitality. One that belonged to the rigid structure service and class. 

She was unable to take the mug from him, her status and station so low comparted to his that the shame of it froze her in place. A bushi should never serve her. It was an insult to his dignity. For a short while after the fight she had forgotten herself, going so far as to let him boost her into the saddle of her new horse. 

In that moment she had not thought of his honour, only the height of the mount and the residual pain of her wounds. 

What must he have thought of her then, her boot in the palm of his hand as he pushed her upward? After all he had fought and suffered in the battle, to have to help the likes of her to mount.

Noticing her look, Piotr quickly took a sip of his own mug. "It's okay Cass, needs a spot of honey and milk in it, but it's not bad."

With Piotr's words about the tea, Shinokishi quietly whispered in Tian, " _Western Barbarian._ " and shook his head. 

The comment, clearly meant only for her, seemed to break through her trance and she fought to suppress an answering flicker of a smile. 

Hesitantly, she lifted both hands to accept the cup, head bowed deeper than the usual nod of thanks that was polite. She could not lift her eyes to his but she felt his touch withdraw as she took the cup, fingers brushing lightly against hers. 

Unintentional as it was, she so little she touched others, outside the need to administer potions, that the brief brush of skin stood out in its strangeness. A spark never sought, nor deliberately granted.

She whispered her thanks in answering Tein and breathed in the scent of the tea, not looking up as he moved away.


End file.
